* The son of farm workers, Joe, his two brothers and sister were raised in impoverished farm labor camps near Lodi, Calif. All of them worked in the fields from a young age‹from picking wine grapes to harvesting beets with the short-handled hoe.

* Joe Serna worked his way through college and served in the Peace Corps, organizing campesinos in isolated villages in the mountains of Guatemala.

* For more than 30 years, he championed the United Farm Workers in Sacramento. He organized car caravans to Delano with food and clothing for the grape strikers. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s organizing UFW boycotts and picketing area stores. Cesar Chavez often called on Joe for help and support; Serna never turned him down.

* He was elected to the Sacramento City Council in 1981. In 1992, he became the city's first Latino mayor. He was considered the most activist and influential mayor the city has ever had.

* His greatest achievement as mayor was reforming the city's poorly performing public schools, which mostly serve Latino and minority children. Serna made better quality schools his biggest priority. He recruited and elected a new reform school board.

Today, test scores are up and the Sacramento City schools are a national model of how an urban school district with poor and minority kids can turn itself around. Everyone says Mayor Serna deserves the credit.

* After Cesar died in 1993, Joe got the City Council to pass a law making Sacramento the first major city in American to create a paid municipal holiday on Cesar's March 31 birthday.

* In 1997, the major got the City Council to rename the park in front of City Hall Cesar Chavez Plaza. It is the most important park in the city, after nearby Capital Park that houses the state Capitol. Joe also got Gov. Pete Wilson's administration to give $1.5 million to renovate Cesar Chavez Plaza from money being used to build the new Cal-EPA state office building across from the park.

* As he was dying from kidney cancer late last week, the mayor's family asked UFW President Arturo Rodriguez to hang a framed photo of Cesar Chavez on the wall at the foot of the mayor's hospital bed in his home so he could look upon his hero. Joe also wore a button with Cesar's face that read, "Nonviolence is our strength."

* After an heroic battle with cancer, he died at home on Sunday, Nov. 6, 1999. Thousands of people in Sacramento--Latino and non-Latino alike--are mourning their mayor.

* The Serna family has asked that instead of flowers, people remember Joe by making contributions to the UFW. The mayor also asked that the union's black-eagle flags be prominently displayed at his funeral.

When this story was posted in November 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Kerry reaches out to Returned VolunteersThe Kerry campaign wants the RPCV vote. Read our interview with Dave Magnani, Massachusetts State Senator and Founder of "RPCVs for Kerry," and his answers to our questions about Kerry's plan to triple the size of the Peace Corps, should the next PC Director be an RPCV, and Safety and Security issues. Then read the "RPCVs for Kerry" statement of support and statements by Dr. Robert Pastor, Ambassador Parker Borg, and Paul Oostburg Sanz made at the "RPCVs for Kerry" Press Conference.

RPCV Carl Pope says the key to winning this election is not swaying undecided voters, but persuading those already willing to vote for your candidate to actually go to the polls.

Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL InterviewPCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before.

Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention Governor Schwarzenegger praised the Peace Corps at the Republican National Convention: "We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach village children." Schwarzenegger has previously acknowledged his debt to his father-in-law, Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver, for teaching him "the joy of public service" and Arnold is encouraging volunteerism by creating California Service Corps and tapping his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead it. Leave your comments and who can come up with the best Current Events Funny?

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Story Source: United Farm Workers

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Guatemala; Hispanic Issues; Obituaries; Politics

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